Google-Syndicated Malware Ads Hosted On CNet

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For several days now Google syndicated ads have been available on CNet's Download.com which redirect the user to sites that push malware. The reports we received say that these links have been in place since at least Wednesday (8/13/2008) and today (Saturday, 8/16) we reconfirmed them.

This ad links to a long URL on http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/. This in turn redirects to http://www.xp-protected.com/, although the report we got had the ad redirecting to http://www.alabeagle.com/. And finally we got redirected to a page on http://www.antivirusxp08.net/. This page was flagged by Firefox as an attack page:

Lots of sites use Google ads, so we don't want to pick on CNet too much. Of course (fingers crossed) such ads could never appear on our site! But just in case, make sure your anti-malware is up to date and, better still, use a browser or service that flags such sites.